10 talks on creatures from the deep

Imagine a squid so big that, when sprawled out, it is the size of a two-story house. Edith Widder has now seen this enormous ocean creature, once the stuff of nautical legend, six times.

[ted_talkteaser id=1684]In today’s talk, Widder shares how we now have filmed proof of the giant squid’s existence, thanks to a mission conducted by herself, Tsunemi Kubodera and Steve O’Shea and financed by the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, NHK. While many previous missions failed to capture evidence of the giant squid, Widder and her fellow scientists used novel approaches — a camera platform that moves silently through the ocean, a bioluminescent electronic jellyfish to attract large sea creatures and a submersible able to take high definition footage from afar — to give us a glimpse of this mythical creature. In fact, they filmed it in action multiple times.